DESCRIPTION: Palliative care is a therapeutic model that can address the physical, psychosocial, spiritual, and practical needs of dying patients and their families. Progress in a broad field such as this is dependent upon developing and improving the scientific foundation for palliative care (Portenoy & Bruera, 2003). The Center for Hospice, Pallative Care and End-of-Life Studies at the University of South Florida (USF) is a research center that has as its focus the health care issues of individuals near the end of life and their families and caregivers. The Center is a unique community-academic partnership of multidisciplinary faculty from the University, and the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, and researchers, administrators, and care providers from two of the largest hospices in the world: The Hospice of the Florida Suncoast, and LifePath Hospice and Palliative Care Inc. Center members work collaboratively to conduct research that informs cutting-edge practice in palliative care, to develop and refine research methodologies that are effective in end-of-life research, and to ensure that research is responsive to the needs and constraints of providers of hospice palliative care services. The proposed conference, 'Charting the Course in End-of-Life Care: From Research to Policy and Practice,' will bring together researchers, care providers, administrators, graduate students, and policy makers representing various disciplines and sites of care to evaluate the current state-of-the-art of this emergency field, to disseminate current research and best-practices, and to generate recommendations for future research in the field. The one-day conference will feature nationally and internationally known researchers in end-of-life and palliative care, as well as provide a forum for new investigators to showcase their research through the submission of research abstracts. The conference will be unique in that interactive 'think tank' sessions will allow academic researchers in end-of-life and palliative care hospice and palliative care providers and representatives of federal funding agencies whose priorities include end-of-life populations and issues, including AHRQ, to mutually create an agenda for the field.